


Blossom Family Values

by burglebezzlement



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Blossom Gothic, F/F, Treat, What if complicated family legacies but too much, graverobbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-13 09:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13567287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Betty reaches out to Cheryl for help getting in touch with her Blossom roots. Cheryl has already decided on a more direct route to the same goal.





	Blossom Family Values

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box, saiditallbefore!
> 
> Content notes: Please note that the graverobbing in the tags is not metaphorical or hypothetical. This story takes place directly after S02E11, The Wrestler, and contains spoilers up to that point. It can be read as going AU from that point.

“Betty? Earth to Betty!”

Veronica’s voice startles Betty, and she looks up. Across the lunchroom table, Veronica is looking at her in concern.

“Sorry, V,” Betty says, brushing off her distraction and hoping Veronica didn’t follow her gaze to Cheryl’s table.

“You were a million miles away, girl. Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Betty shakes her head. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

* * *

Apart from her parents and Chic, Betty hasn’t told anyone but Cheryl about Polly’s babies. Polly’s babies are Jason’s children. Cheryl has a right to know.

Betty knows how it hurts, knows the way the news puts a pit in your stomach, a catch in your breath. She tries to break the news gently, but Cheryl still takes a step back, eyes uncertain, before her glossy mask slips into place and she makes a nasty remark about the babies’ names.

It’s not like Betty disagrees.

She finds herself watching Cheryl. Wondering. Betty’s own father is a Blossom — she herself is as much a Blossom by birth as Cheryl and Jason were. 

Betty’s always assumed that her darkness came from her mother’s side, from the little lost girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and fell in with Serpents. But maybe she’s been wrong all along. She thinks of her father, of what he’s done, and she wonders.

* * *

That evening, Betty tells her mother she’s studying at the library. She heads down the uneven gravel path to Thistlehouse instead.

Cheryl opens the door. She’s wearing a short skirt and a fuzzy long-sleeved sweater. The sweater makes her look vulnerable for a moment, until her face hardens.

“What do you want?”

_I just wanted to check on you. I wanted to ask you about the Blossoms. I want you to tell me my sister is the worst. I want you to explain me to myself, because right now, I don’t know how._

“I don’t know,” Betty says, instead, and maybe it’s the most honest answer she could give.

Cheryl looks her up and down, taking in Betty’s capri jeans and flowered blouse and her hair, pulled back in a tight ponytail. “You can’t stay,” she says. “I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“Let me go with you.”

“Why?”

“Call it getting in touch with my Blossom roots,” Betty says.

Cheryl huffs. “Appropriate enough. Fine. But if you tell anyone about this, I will end you. Capiche?”

“Got it.”

Cheryl reaches behind the door and brings out a crowbar. “Come on,” she says. “Tick tock.”

* * *

Thistlehouse is located on the outer fringe of what was once the Blossom estate, a great sweep of sugarbush and expansive lawns leading up to Thornhill, the former crown jewel, now lost. The charred timbers of the once-grand mansion stand out in stark relief against the full moon as Cheryl leads Betty up the drive.

At the gate to the Blossom cemetery, Cheryl inspects the padlock and then raises her crowbar.

“I can pick it,” Betty says hastily, and Cheryl considers her for a moment before stepping back.

“Go ahead. If you can.”

Betty pulls her special hairpin out, the one she keeps filed down so it slips inside any lock. It takes a few minutes, but she gets it open. 

“There,” she says, triumphantly.

“A real Blossom would just have broken it,” Cheryl says, but Betty thinks she hears a grudging respect. The cemetery gates give way with a whine, their unoiled hinges moving hard after months of neglect.

Cheryl leads her through the cemetery, past the well-kept grave of Jason Blossom and into the weedier, darker neighborhoods of Blossom dead. Betty wonders who’s keeping Jason Blossom’s grave up now, with Cheryl’s family fallen into disgrace, and has an incongruous mental image of Cheryl pushing a lawnmower through the cemetery.

They walk past crypts, past monuments with weeping angels and funeral urns, past the shadows of tilted headstones. Cheryl’s target is the largest mausoleum, a granite-faced structure at the back of the cemetery. Her crowbar makes short work of the doorway.

“Cheryl, wait. Put these on first.” Betty digs through her backpack and hands Cheryl a pair of new nitrile gloves before putting a pair on herself, careful to touch only the cuffs. She started carrying them so she could collect evidence from the Black Hood’s messages without contaminating them. She didn’t expect to be covering up her own crimes, but whatever Cheryl has planned here, it already isn’t legal.

“Fine.” Cheryl puts the gloves on, but she ignores the hair tie Betty’s holding out.

“Put your hair up,” Betty says, a touch of ice in her voice. “If they find long, red hair in there, they’re going to know it was you.”

“Why?” Cheryl turns away, her long hair streaming out loose like a banner, inky dark in the moonlight. “Everyone knows I’m the caretaker of Thornhill’s cemetery. I’m meant to be here, Betty. I’m not descended from a family turncoat like you.”

She ducks under the doorway. Betty waits for a moment, and then follows her inside.

Cobwebs cover every surface, capturing the dust that billows up with their footsteps. Cheryl pulls out her cell phone, throwing the interior into dim light, and Betty relaxes when she sees caskets, not skeletons, set into the niches in the mausoleum wall.

“Are you here to find family jewelry or something?” Betty asks.

“Please. These baubles would hardly be enough to stop Mother from putting out the red light.”

“Putting out the red light?” Betty scrambles to follow Cheryl deeper into the crypt. “Cheryl, is everything okay at home?”

Cheryl ignores her. She brushes her hair back and then begins ripping the cobwebs away from the nameplates below each coffin. Betty peers after her — Blossom, Blossom, Blossom — Pickens?

“What’s Pickens doing here?” Betty asks.

“Keep your allies close,” Cheryl says, obscurely. She brushes away the cobwebs from the top of the coffin and then goes after it with the crowbar, levering up the lid. “Well? Are you going to help?”

Betty swallows, and steps forward to help Cheryl pry up the splintering wood of the coffin lid. Shreds of rotten cloth hang around the corpse’s torso, its head horribly shrunken, teeth protruding from an unknowing mouth, hair still clinging to the remains of the scalp.

Cheryl plunges her crowbar into the corpse’s neck before Betty can react. “There’s a bag in my coat pocket,” she says. “Can you open it?”

Betty holds the bag out open at arm’s length, trying not to look too closely at the head as Cheryl drops it in.

* * *

They cut across Fox Forest. The woods are dark and ancient, keeping their secrets close. At one point, Cheryl pulls Betty into the undergrowth to hide from a passing amorous couple, and Betty’s heart beats faster at the feel of Cheryl’s hand in her own, the warmth from Cheryl’s body, the smell of Cheryl’s hair. The weight of the head in its bag is between them.

“They’re gone,” Cheryl says, a lifetime later, and Betty follows her back to the path.

Sheriff Keller has set up nightly patrols in Pickens Park. Cheryl and Betty watch from the forest’s edge while one of the deputies walks around the statue and reports on a walkie-talkie. Once the deputy’s gone, Cheryl saunters across the lawn and climbs up on the statue’s base. She pulls something from another pocket and begins spreading it on the statue’s severed neck.

Betty hands up the head when Cheryl reaches for it, taking care to keep the bag between herself and the withered flesh.

“The mayor put out a call for whoever was responsible for the statue’s desecration to replace Pickens’ head,” Cheryl says, looking into the head’s sunken eye sockets. “I’m just answering the call.”

She holds the head to the neck, letting whatever epoxy or glue she’s used set, while Betty watches for the sheriff’s deputies.

* * *

Cheryl wants to watch from the edge of the woods, but Betty pulls her away. She’s already used up any slack she might have with Kevin’s dad. 

“Thanks for helping,” Cheryl says. “Not that I needed it.”

Betty smiles. “Is this what it is to be a Blossom?”

“Screw being a Blossom,” Cheryl says. “The entire rotten legacy should be quenched in fire.”

They take the shortcut back to Thistlehouse. In the distance, Betty hears sirens, sudden and shattering, and wonders. Did the deputy come back on his patrol and find the head, or has some other shocking tragedy just started to unfold?

Cheryl pauses at the gate to Thistlehouse. There’s a light on in one of the front bedrooms — Cheryl’s mother’s, perhaps — and Cheryl turns away.

“Everything okay?” Betty’s fingers brush Cheryl’s hand.

“Keep your Cooper concern to yourself.”

“Fine. I just asked.” 

Cheryl turns to lean back against the fence, her face open and vulnerable, and Betty leans back against her, too close, but Cheryl doesn’t move away.

“When does it get easier, Betty?”

Betty lets herself meet Cheryl’s eyes, their faces so close together. She doesn’t have an answer, but maybe it doesn’t matter. She leans in, her lips finding Cheryl’s as they come together.

Let the fire burn away the darkness.


End file.
